Russia is using “very similar” rhetoric towards Moldova as it did before the invasion of Ukraine, according to a think tank.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said the Kremlin was setting the “informational conditions” required to launch a “hybrid operation” in the eastern European country.
The pro-Russian Transnistria region split from Moldova before the collapse of Soviet rule and fought a brief war against the newly independent state lying between Ukraine and Romania.
A fresh dispute has recently emerged over Moldova's imposition of customs duties on exports and imports from Transnistria as part of the ex-Soviet state's efforts to join the European Union. Last December, Brussels indicated that it would open negotiation talks with Chisinau.
Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday made a series of false allegations about Moldova, including the claim that the US and EU are in control of the country’s Government.
Speaking in the Russian state Duma, he claimed that there are 200,000 Russian citizens in Transnistria and that Russia is “concerned about their fate”, adding that Moscow “will not allow them to become victims of another Western adventure.”
In a report, the ISW said: “The Kremlin is conducting information operations against Moldova very similar to those that the Kremlin used before its invasions of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022, likely to set conditions to justify possible future Russian escalation against Moldova.”
They added: “The timing of a possible Russian hybrid operation in Moldova is unclear, but the Kremlin is setting informational conditions to make it possible soon.”
Mr Lavrov’s comments “suggests that the Kremlin is orchestrating these wider efforts in the information space”, they said.
Michel Hofman, the head of the army in Belgium, warned last December that Russia could attack Moldova.
President Vladimir Putin's language "is always ambiguous. It is absolutely possible that they will also have other ideas later. Either in the south in Moldova or the Baltic states," he told Belgian news outlet VRT.
"Europe must urgently prepare and make it clear that it can defend itself" and that "it will ... counterattack if necessary,” he added.
Last year, Moldova’s president Maia Sandu labelled Russia a threat to the country’s national security.
A strategy document unveiled by her Government claimed that Russia and its proxies “represent the most dangerous and persistent source of threat which, if not countered, can have severe effects on the statehood, democracy and prosperity of the country.”
